Kitty's House of Horrors (kn-7) by Carrie Vaughn (christmas read aloud txt) 📕

followed on the same path. He paused at the entrance for one last look around inside.

Something exploded. A whoosh of red fire, then a whoomp, like the air sucking out of a room. I grabbed Tina and fell to the ground, sheltering her. She screamed.

I didn’t see what caused it—I’d never learn exactly what Lee triggered, whether he tripped a line that Tina and I had missed or stepped on a pressure plate. Maybe the explosion had been on a timer. Maybe it would have gone off no matter what we’d done, and it was undoubtedly meant to catch all of us in the blast.

A searing, angry heat washed over us. Tina curled up, sheltering her head, and I did the same as debris rained. Ashes and burning filled my nose, and I choked back a howl. Time to run, Wolf said. This was dangerous, we had to get away.

No. Not without Tina. She was dead out here by herself.

I whined, shook, hugged myself to keep fur from sprouting, and finally looked up. Little fires had broken out around us, on the forest floor and in trees, but none of them seemed serious. Tongues of dancing flame flickered in a regular circle around what used to be the tent, now lying in burned, shredded pieces. Other debris remained: the charred stump of a table, flipped over and flung a dozen yards away; a mangled cot; the ammunition cases—made of metal, whatever explosives were inside them hadn’t ignited—and other unidentifiable debris. And Lee.

He’d been thrown from what had been the entrance of the tent and lay sprawled, twisted into an inhuman shape. His clothes had burned away, along with his skin and hair. All of him was charred. He still had the rifle in his burned hands. He smelled cooked. I covered my face and gagged.

Tina clung to my arm with both hands. “Lycanthropes are tough—they can survive just about anything, right?” she said.

We could survive a lot of things, but not everything. If we were decapitated, if our hearts were destroyed, if the damage was too great—I didn’t know all the limits of what we could survive. But I didn’t think a lycanthrope could survive this.

I crept forward because I had to see. Heat rolled off the whole area, baking the air, making me itch. I tried to keep from smelling it and kept my gaze on Lee. He didn’t move. When I got close enough, I could see he didn’t have a face anymore. Nothing but a black crust. He wasn’t breathing. I couldn’t hear his heart. I waited for five minutes, to be sure. When I touched his neck, the skin broke, still hot, still smoking. I didn’t feel a pulse. Too much damage, too much shock, with no chance to heal. So, high explosives could also kill a werewolf.

I hurried back to Tina, grabbed her, and kept moving. I didn’t have to urge her along to keep up.

“What do we do now?” Her voice was stiff—forced calm.

“Keep going,” I said. “We have to call someone. We have to get help.”

“I don’t know how long I can keep running.”

“We don’t have to run. We just have to keep moving.” That explosion had probably been heard all over the valley. The hunters knew their trap had been sprung. They might come back to assess the damage. We had to move.

I wondered what the others would think had happened. But I couldn’t worry about that. I hoped they wouldn’t decide to come look.

A hundred yards farther on, we came close enough to the trail to hear shouting.

“Help! Help me! Oh, God, please!” The voice was rough, as if it had been screaming for a while. No tears, no sobbing, but the despair was plain. We stopped, listened.

“That’s Conrad,” I said.

The scent of blood on the air hit me. Part of me wanted to leave him, just pass on by and keep going—he wasn’t one of us. This was probably another trap, with Conrad as bait, and we’d be better off moving on. But we didn’t.

“No, go slow,” Tina hissed, after I’d started to race forward. We crept forward more cautiously. I looked around, up into the trees, searching for the merest glint or hint of movement. Wondering where the next bullet was going to come from. And bombs, those guys were using bombs.

Tina clenched my arm and pointed ahead to a dark spot on the trail. A sinkhole, with debris scattered around the edges. Conrad clutched one side with an arm, bracing, trying to scramble out but unable to gain the leverage.

“Conrad?” I said, in as loud a whisper as I could manage.

“Kitty? Oh, my God, help me! Help!”

Tina and I rushed to the edge of the sinkhole and looked in. The bottom was lined with spears, a dozen rigid poles sticking straight up, tipped with shining metal—silver. A tiger trap. Conrad had sprung the trap and fallen in, and one of the spikes had impaled his leg through the calf, from ankle to knee. Blood dripped down the length of the spear.

He’d managed to keep himself from falling in and impaling himself on more sharp points. But he was clinging and unable to pull himself off the spear that did get him.

“Oh, shit,” Tina murmured.

Yeah. That about covered it. Maybe because we couldn’t save Lee, we worked hard to save Conrad.

I grabbed Conrad’s arms, gave him an anchor, kept him from sliding in farther. He was pale, covered in sweat, his clothes soaking with it, and shivering, no doubt on the edge of shock. Tina lay flat, as far over the edge as she could and still keep her balance, which let her stretch just far enough forward to reach the spear that pinned Conrad. She grabbed it, maybe thinking to pull it out of its hole. Her hands slipped on the blood. She tried again, working to be careful, but she couldn’t help but jerk it when she did. Every time, Conrad groaned, gritting his teeth, trying to